OKAY, THE GOV'S
been good so far. He smiled benignly when a Japanese
reporter asked him whether he planned to run for President. He hopes he's
not disappointing the Japanese people, he says, but no.

None of these people waiting to use their shrine have any idea who Jesse Ventura is, but they never complained about him cutting in front of them.Photo: Martin Kaste

It's amazing, how polite the Japanese are. At the Shinto shrine dedicated to
Sumo wrestling, where Ventura and his old tag-team buddy, Masa Saito, started
the day, we trampled the place. TV crews in one direction, microphone guys
tucked in underneath, three Minnesota state troopers (plainclothes) pushing
and shoving the whole mass up and down the steps around the temple. We
actually kind of felt bad, when we stopped to think this was a religious-type
location we were "bigfooting." But no reaction out of the 50 or so families
waiting in line to set up some divine good luck for their cute kids in
kimonos. Either they didn't mind, or they didn't see. But how could they
not see?

You start bowing back at people. You can hardly help yourself; they bow,
you want to bow back. And you feel bad about all the unknown and unknowable
you're committing, just by standing there and breathing.

A long-time American resident here tells me they don't take offense at our
rudeness, as long as they don't think we did whatever we did on purpose. One
can only hope. I can think of at least a couple of American politicians
who'd appreciate that kind of arrangement: "I did not mean my previous
comment to be offensive." Well there you are. Case closed.

One other disconcerting thing: If you make the effort and offer a bit of
Japanese -- "arigato," for example, they giggle at you. Sure, they bow, but
they're giggling, too. When you think about it, isn't that kind of rude?